


Services No Longer Required

by fallintolife



Series: thank you for your service [1]
Category: Persona 3, Persona 5
Genre: F/F, Gen, Only NSFW In How It Makes Me Feel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-14 00:24:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallintolife/pseuds/fallintolife
Summary: Company business intrudes on Haru's videocall with Mitsuru: a wayward employee who must be personally let go by the company CEO. Haru watches as Mitsuru cuts a man down to size, and has very gay feelings about it.





	Services No Longer Required

“Madame Kirijo.”

Haru can’t help but frown when Mitsuru’s secretary pages her through the office intercom. It’s not the first time they’ve been interrupted during a video call, but disappointment still pings through her. 

Ever since her father’s death, she and Mitsuru have been speaking more regularly. She never would have chosen this method, but lately she feels closer to the other woman, as if she understands her better. The burden of being an independent woman in an overwhelmingly male profession is a heavy one, and no one understands that better than the two of them. They rarely discuss business, but Haru feels as though she still has a lot left to learn from Mitsuru in other arenas. 

She’s described Mitsuru as her older sister to the other Phantom Thieves, and times such as these certainly make her feel like the petulant younger sister. Even knowing she has no right to more of Mitsuru’s time than the other woman can afford to give her, Haru can’t help but resent the secretary for intruding.

“A moment, Haru-chan,” Mitsuru says, muting Haru’s end of the call. She turns to the speaker. “Yes?”

“Your five o’clock is here, Madame Kirijo.” The secretary, young but normally very composed, has a thread of strain in her voice.

Mitsuru frowns, not responding. As Haru well knows, Mitsuru doesn’t have a five o’clock today. She’s scheduled with Haru through five-thirty.

“Your very urgent five o’clock,” the secretary adds.

Understanding dawns on Mitsuru’s face. “Understood. Send him in.”

Without a glance down at her computer monitor, Mitsuru turns her chair to face the door. Her hands reach upward, hair falling down around her shoulders in crimson waves, and she unbuttons the top button of her suit jacket to reveal a triangle of skin. Somehow, the change makes her seem fiercer, predatory. Haru watches as Mitsuru’s face closes into sharp lines, and in that moment she understands entirely why they call Mitsuru ‘Ice Queen’.

Haru can’t see Mitsuru’s office door, though she can hear the sound of it opening and closing. What she can see is Mitsuru’s face, which goes even more glacial than before.

“Yon-san,” Mitsuru says, ice dripping from her tone even just from those two words.

“Kirijo-sama,” says a man who sounds too sure of himself to be facing Mitsuru when she’s in this kind of mood.

Mitsuru does not invite him to sit down. She does not offer him refreshments. She does not ask about his family, or how his vacation went - Christmas having just passed - or any of the usual business pleasantries. Haru, immensely used to Mitsuru’s warmth when they are alone, or at least her indulgence when they are in public, is left a little flat-footed. Mitsuru is the one who codified business politeness for Haru. Who is this man and what has he done, that she’s left all of them by the wayside?

One elegant hand reaches into a desk drawer, pulling out a manilla folder. She places it on top of the desk, then folds her hands on top of it.

“Yon-san,” Mitsuru says, “do you know why you are here?”

The older woman measures her words, as though the man is so far beneath her that he deserves none of them. Haru has heard others speak this way, but never Mitsuru, who either completely engages a person or swiftly dismisses them.

“I wouldn’t presume, Kirijo-sama,” the man says, pretending to be humble. 

Haru has never seen Mitsuru project this clearly and transparently, and yet this man, this Yon, has mis-read her so completely he sounds as though he is expecting some sort of reward. Haru cannot see this man, can barely hear him, and yet she already dislikes him immensely.

“Oh,” Mitsuru says, deadly sharp, “but you are so very good at presuming.”

A beat, in which Haru can almost feel the man realizing he has misstepped.

“Let us review.”

The manilla folder opens under Mitsuru’s slender hands like a death sentence. She withdraws the first sheet, twisting and placing it so it faces the man standing across from her. Haru can’t see it, as much as she desperately wishes she could.

“This was your first offense,” Mitsuru says, two fingers lingering on the top of the sheet. “Minor, deserving only of a stern reminder that we do not conduct business that way. You have attended no less than four seminars, three workshops, and have had countless informal reminders of business ethics in your time here. You are aware that we do not accept gifts from clients in excess of a set amount.”

She draws out another sheet, sets it next to the first. This, Haru can tell by the gloss briefly reflected in her laptop camera, is a picture.

“Your second offense would have resulted in demotion, but you would not have been dismissed,” Mitsuru tells him. “We do believe in second chances, and your record was otherwise spotless.”

Haru hears, very clearly, the sound of the man swallowing. It sounds painful.

“The third occasion, however,” Mitsuru says, already presenting another sheet, “was frankly unforgivable.”

Paper after paper comes out of the folder, now presented without comment. Some of them have the gloss of photographs, some are stapled or clipped together, and one shows Haru a glimpse of neatly-colored graphs. Mitsuru’s face doesn’t change, and her eyes don’t leave Yon’s. Her tone remains even, her posture impeccable. She lays out the evidence as calmly and methodically as the scientist Haru knows her to be, patiently dissecting a specimen under her glass.

Haru swallows, pathetically grateful Mitsuru hasn’t spared her a glance. She isn’t entirely sure their relationship would survive Mitsuru witnessing her flushed cheeks and surely dilated pupils.

When the entirety of the folder has been laid out, Mitsuru sits back in her chair. She deliberately crosses one leg over the other, an elbow on the arm of her chair and the opposite hand held at her side. Her expression is one Haru is intimately familiar with: that of a woman considering actions of questionable morality and unquestionable illegality. Mitsuru, unlike Haru, would never voice those thoughts.

“If you were to disappear, Yon, not a single soul would mourn it.”

The noise that escapes Haru’s throat is unearthly, thin and helpless and god, painfully aroused. She’s been forcefully ignoring how Mitsuru’s display has been affecting her, but it seems that ‘casually murderous’ is consistently her type, and Makoto is not in fact an outlier. There is a long list of reasons why Haru never could, and never would, act on the incredibly uncomfortable attraction currently pushing at her. However, parts of her don’t care, and have very vocal opinions about Mitsuru choosing to exercise her power against someone who so richly deserves it.

The man, silent until now, blusters. “Is that a threat?”

In so very many situations, the verbal answer would be no even though the real answer is yes. Kirijo Mitsuru has not manufactured any of those situations.

“Yes.”

Haru covers her mouth tightly with both hands, eyes almost painfully wide.

“You can’t-- I’m going to--” He flusters and fails to complete many sentences that would, again, serve him well in many situations. He half-invokes laws, lawyers, social consequences, and the press. Even with his complete failure to read a situation, it doesn’t seem as though he believes any of it.

Mitsuru patiently waits for him to finish, eyes drilling into him. If Haru didn’t have such a close view of her, she would doubt Mitsuru is even breathing, let alone blinking. She is unmoving, unmoveable.

“What you are going to do,” Mitsuru says, still in the even tone that she began the encounter using, “is leave my office, draft a resignation, and quietly seek employment elsewhere.”

He presumably opens his mouth, because Mitsuru’s next words are said in the cadence of someone who knows she’s interrupting.

“I am aware you have a daughter. My previous statements stand.” (Including, Haru thinks with a wince, the one about no one missing him.) “If not for the fact that your daughter seems to be an upstanding young woman, you would be leaving this office in a very different state of being. I suggest--” It is in no way a suggestion, and Haru suspects even Yon knows that. “--you focus less on personal enrichment, and more on continuing whatever small amount grace allowed you to raise a valedictorian.”

Mitsuru’s eyes bore into him for another moment, and then something indefinable, almost unnoticeable, lessens in her gaze.

“You are dismissed.”

Haru hears the scuffle of feet on carpet, the door open and shut hastily. Then, that indomitable gaze turns to her.

For a single instant, Haru is exposed, pinned like a butterfly to the wall behind her. She forgets, too easily and too often, that Mitsuru has come through everything Haru has - and more - with composure and sanity intact. She forged herself out of those same ashes long before they met. If any part of Haru’s journey is easier, it is because she can walk in Mitsuru’s footprints. An unbreakable woman sits in front of her, one who consciously lets down her barriers to connect with a younger echo of herself.

Then the moment passes, and Haru does her best to quietly let go of her held breath. The Ice Queen melts, turning back into Haru’s Mitsu-chan.

Unfortunately, Haru’s arousal isn’t so easily left behind.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Mitsuru says, with a rueful smile. It seems foreign on a face that so recently was absolutely immobile.

“It’s fine,” Haru says, working desperately to keep her voice within its natural register.

Mitsuru tilts her head. “Unfortunately, we have gone over time, and I have other matters to attend to.”

Haru also has other matters to attend to. Rather urgently, in fact.

The smile on Mitsuru’s face falters. “Haru-chan…?”

“I’m fine!” Haru says, too quickly and far too strained. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow!”

The older woman frowns. “Are you certain…?”

“Oh yes,” Haru says, composure absolutely gone, “I have a-a date, and have to get ready.”

She does not in fact have a date. However, Makoto will absolutely be coming over.

“Well,” Mitsuru says, doubtful, “enjoy your date.”

“I will!”

Haru slams her laptop cover down, cheeks burning. A moment later, she opens it again, already posing a question to her internet search engine. Her other hand picks up her phone, tapping out a message. Makoto responds a moment later with her ETA.

Haru lets out a shuddering sigh, and begins attending to her matters.

**Author's Note:**

> futaba: bitch u good??  
futaba: ur search history is giving me anxiety FOR u  
futaba: u dont even have a sister  
futaba: BITCH  
futaba: ANSWER UR PHONE HARU


End file.
